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Hands on @Snapi for iCity

During the the 2nd day of the iCity Camp,15th of November, a dedicated workshop for the application Snapi! was organized. The purpose of Snapi for iCity is to offer a development environment where kids and citizens that are non professional programmers can become developers of their own application prototypes, accessing to real functionalities and data of their cities.

Snapi for iCity is an innovative approach to API programming meant for the general public. By developing Snapi! and making it available to the public (and free in both senses), is envisaged to get students and citizens interested in API programming, teaching them how the iCity platform is structured, how to create applications that use its data and how real-world applications interact with internet services such as the iCity platform.

It has been developed on top of the Snapi! visual programming environment, developed by UC-Berkeley, that uses a graphical metaphor based on construction blocks to teach how to program by eliminating syntax errors and removing the need to memorize instructions and code conventions (semicolons, indentation, parenthesis, function names, etc.). Lowering the complexity of programming means it is much easier to focus in algorithmics and the abstraction of real world problems into code.

During the workshop, a number of applicative uses of the Snapi for iCity were introduced: exploring the iCity API with data blocks that allow to do visualizations of sensors such as parking spots, noise, temperature or pollution among many other information systems accessible by the iCity API.

At the end of the workshop, developers were invited to start building their own Snapi application using the iCity data blocks. Now it's your turn, have a go onhttp://snapi.citilab.eu!